We can even pinpoint the exact time it happened: On the last play of the Packers-Seahawks game, which turned Monday Night Football into a Monday Night Fiasco.

The clownish notion by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the league owners that they could continue to stage games that count while locking out the real game officials and using a rag-tag collection of playground officials as replacements reflects a degree of arrogance about its product, and a condescending, dismissive, insulting attitude towards the intelligence of its customers that is remarkably excessive even by the elitist standards of the grandiosely self-important NFL.

At best it's now a clown league.

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At worst, this is consumer fraud.

How can the NFL expect its fans to take these games seriously when the league itself doesn't?

For that matter, how can the league charge regular season prices to watch clown ball?

The Monday Night Fiasco ended with Green Bay winning the game by intercepting a Hail Mary pass in the end zone on the last play of the game -- only to have the officiating crew inexplicably rule it a touchdown catch, and a victory, for Seattle.

This ultimate NFL nose-thumbing moment to its fans was bracketed by what will surely go down as the signature photo from Zebragate 2012 -- two game officials standing virtually shoulder-to-shoulder signaling two completely opposite rulings on the play. One signaled touchdown, one signaled interception.

Your honor, the prosecution rests.

The existence, and fumbling, bumbling work of the replacement officials recalls, of course, the famous line by former Browns coach Paul Brown to an overmatched bus driver who couldn't find his way to the stadium: "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the person who hired you."

The replacement officials are doing the best they can. The best they can is good enough in Division III college football, high school football, and the Lingerie Football League.

It's not good enough for the NFL -- except in the minds of those running the NFL.

The Monday Night Fiasco capped a third consecutive week of regular season games being marred, mismanaged, and -- in the case of Green Bay vs. Seattle -- decided by untrained, ill-equipped, overmatched officials, which in many cases has turned NFL games into total anarchy.

Calls are made that should not be made. Calls are not made that should be made. And Monday night a team that won a game, lost a game.

Meanwhile, the smug NFL hierarchy continues to play hardball with the locked out NFL Referees Association, and acts as though there's nothing wrong at all with the product it is putting on the field -- for which it is continues to charge its fans and advertisers exorbitant prices.

In reality, the games are a joke. The season is a sham. And all of the NFL players and coaches, who are the ones most directly impacted by the clown ball because it's their livelihood, are prohibited by the league from saying anything critical about this hypocritical and counterfeit NFL season.

However, following the Monday Night Fiasco, the twitter universe blew up with NFL players tweeting tweaks at the twits running this NFL sideshow.

It's fine if the NFL wants to play hardball with the real refs. Just don't start the season with fifth and sixth-string officials trying to run the games.

If the NFL wants to break the Referees Union, or if the NFL wants to win every single point of the negotiations, fine.

Suspend the season. Negotiate until you have a new deal. Then start the season.

The way it is now, it's unfair to the fans and the league's advertisers, but most important of all, the league's coaches and players to play games that are not being decided by the coaches and players, but by the over-matched officials.

In many games, skirmishes between opposing players break out after many plays, because the pretend officials are afraid to throw a flag. That's how games get out of control. Following the Thursday night game, Bill Belichick ran after an official and grabbed him.

Belichick will get fined for that. But you can understand the frustration. Following the Monday Night Fiasco Packers coach Mike McCarthy and quarterback Aaron Rodgers dutifully showed up in the interview room and had to dance around the only question worth asking after perhaps the worst officiated game in NFL history:

"So how does it feel to get jobbed?"

Grim-faced, jaws clenched, McCarthy and Rodgers did everything possible to avoid responding to the only question worth asking with the only answer worth giving: